The Masks of Liberation

Radanji is a village, today almost extinct, in Cologne.

Bulja was one of the mothers of this village, who had given birth to five sons and lived with the dream of raising them, marrying them and growing old.

Qeshibesi is a village, today small, in Dangëlli.

Taméja was one of the mothers of this village, who had given birth to four sons and lived with the dream of raising them, marrying and growing old.

Both of them were from those old Albanian women who only laughed a little when they were young and who then spent their lives silently serving their husbands and sons, generation after generation and time after time.

But the dreams of suffering mothers rarely come true, because life has other plans.

Some of Radanji's sons joined the National Front, just as some of Qeshibes' sons joined the Communist Party in the years of World War II. Of that War that involved everything, kingdoms, Emperors and Presidents, Nazi Fuehrers, Fascist Dukes and Bolshevik First Secretaries, from Moscow, London, Tokyo and Washington, and that found its way to penetrate deep there, in the crevices of Cologne and Dangelli.

The sons of mother Bule and mother Tamë, some came out to fight with their minds, and some others were left behind by the War and took the mountains. Boys have that job, their heads are filled with something, work, ideas, anger, or ideals and without looking back, they take the mountains and are ready to kill and kill for what their heads tell them. Without thinking about the mothers they left behind, locked in the empty walls of their houses, waiting for any news about the sons who are killed and killed for freedom, social democracy, social equality, national liberation, conservative right or progressive left.

Finally, like all wars, the Second War ended, leaving behind tens of millions of dead and all the systems of humanity either upside down or shaken to its foundations.

The war also ended for mother Bule in Radanj, but she left behind two sons who fled to the mountains who followed them like rabbits to kill them and three brothers exiled to the marshes of Myzeqe.

The War also ended for mother Tamena there in Qeshibes, but she left behind her husband killed in the War, and the four orphaned sons in that war that promised us to be the final War that would bring eternal happiness.

Both mothers put black veils on their heads that they did not take off until the last day of their lives, which would be even blacker.

I knew mother Bule from the confessions of her son, Ekremi, one of the most famous activists of the Albanian diaspora in America. With the two sons imprisoned in Korça, and brothers, daughter-in-law and baby scattered in exile, Ekrem, the eldest of the sons, together with his mother Bule and his younger brothers, was forced to escape so that he would not end up arrested. Imagine the mother who is forced to leave her sons in prison (and who never saw them again until she died) fleeing at night across the border trails carried by her other son and dragging two other small sons behind her. Meanwhile, one of the boys was shot. What did he think? What has he felt, what sorrow has his soul seen? We'll never know.

As for mother Tamë, I knew her personally, because she was a bride at my grandmother's door. Besides the husband who killed you in the war, you had to raise your young sons alone. I have memories of her that today seem incredible, that even if you put them in the movies they would seem strained, but they are evidence of a rude era. And let's not forget that mother Tameja was on the side of the winners of the War, imagine the emptiness of the mothers of the losers of the War!

These mothers and thousands more like them, did not know each other, they loved their country, but the century of ideologies made them senselessly suffer for ideologies that they neither invented nor understood.

Even their sons, mother Bules' mother Ekrem and Tamesa's mother Ferhati, both of whom I knew personally, loved Albania with their soul.

Good Albanian, anti-communist patriot Ekremi, ready to give everything for Albania while mourning the longing for his country for tens of years in a row. A good Albanian, a loyal officer of his homeland, for whom he would have given his life if it was necessary, even Ferhati, being a communist and an opponent to the death of the other side.

These two, just like their mothers, did not know each other, but the century of ideologies put them in front of each other, ready to take the other's life if they were in front of each other, always in the name of ideologies that promised a better world. good.

The fate of these two mothers is the same as the fate of thousands of other mothers who were scarred forever by the consequences of the ideology of boys, who clashed for decades, without even killing their minds for the senseless pain they caused each other. nor for the excruciating pain that stuck in their mothers' hearts until they left this world one after the other in silence.

We liberated Albania, today we are also celebrating the 80th anniversary of the victory, but we tied the handkerchiefs to the mothers for the rest of their lives.

Therefore, on this day, let's make it an annual custom, to lay flowers and wreaths on the graves of the opposing camps, each in their own, as they were separated here 80 years ago, with the anger that still absurdly we still keep it; but then let's go together and put a flower on the graves of the Albanian mothers, the great sufferers of our quarrels.